Down the 1911 rabbit-hole

Every single human intervention in a record-set leaves its own layer of errors and omissions. Even the originals have mistakes. My own birth cert records my father as a farmer, something that irritated him immensely when he found out – he was proud he couldn’t tell one end of a cow from another. I presume the registrar in Portiuncula hospital in 1954 didn’t know Da’s occupation and made a reasonable guess. In 1950s rural Ireland he would have been right most of the time.

The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other milk.

Add to that the errors made when the records are catalogued. And then the omissions when they’re microfilmed. And the ones that are overlooked when the microfilms are digitised. Not to mention the mistranscriptions.

It’s a wonder we can find anything at all.

What set me off on this was last week’s post about 1911 census returns imaged online but not transcribed. It produced an itch that had to be scratched: what about all the other 1911 returns that are missing? Some fell down the back of a desk early on and never made it to the National Archives. Some were missed by the Mormon microfilm team, but exist in hard copy in NAI. And some were microfilmed but never made it online, for reasons only known to the digitisers, Library and Archives Canada.

I find your blog post relevant as yesterday I found one of my relatives’ name transcribed on a baptism record on Ancestry as “Larry” when it is clearly ‘Fanny’. No wonder, I couldn’t find it. Also annoying they won’t correct the info as FMP do, only allowing one to add ‘alternative information’ which itself has a certain irony at this point in time.

Many years ago, I randonly asked, on line, where the church or civil records would be for Lenmanagh, County Offaly, Ireland. (For my gr-grandparents HOOKS/FLATTERY).Some very kind man wrote back and said they would not be at that parish but would be in the Banagher area of Co Offaly. Through the Mormon library I found the film #1279226. I found three Hook’s brothers marriages at Banagher and Ferbane (same film), also it was readable. Did not find my gr-grandmother’s (REBECCA FLATTERY) baptism, unless she was baptized as Ann Flattery with parents Thomas and Hester. Her birth was 1826 (?). If anyone has any ideas write back at this cite. Thanks, Corrine